How to Format External Drive using EXFAT for Mac & Windows Compatibility Due to PCs and Macs are two different operating systems, they use different file systems. By default, Macs are with the HFS+ (since 2017 there's new Apple File System, APFS, optimized for flash storage), while PCs are with NTFS and they're incompatible with each other. If you want to transfer files from a Mac to Windows PC and vice versa using an external portable hard drive then you have to format the drive to work with both Windows and Mac can read and write too.
At least 8GB USB memory stick. Your MAC computer. Following the instructions you will be able to create a Windows bootable USB drive from a MAC which can be used in any pc. This stupid website removed all of the formatting from the command. Here it is properly formatted.
Generally, there are two choice that is by using the FAT32 and exFAT file system. In this guide we're using exFAT instead of FAT32, because FAT32 has a maximum 4GB file size limit whereas exFAT can work with files as large as 16EB (exabytes). EXFAT also performs better than FAT32. You can machine. However, if you want to use part of the drive for OS X's Time Machine backups, you should do this from the Mac. How to Format External Drive on Mac Most External drives you by will automatically be formatted in NTFS, which is a Windows file system. Macs can only read but not write to a NTFS file system.
So if you want your external hard drive to be backward compatible with both OS's then you need to reformat it with FAT32 OR exFAT. You format USB flash drive in built-in Disk Utility application. Here's how to launch Disk Utility.
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Press Command+Space to open the Spotlight, type Disk Utility, and press Return to launch the app. You can also open a Finder window, select Applications in the sidebar, and head to Utilities Disk Utility. If there is a USB flash drive plugged into Mac, you can see it under External in the Disk Utility's sidebar. Select the drive. Click the Erase button to erase the entire drive and create a single partition on it.
You'll be asked to provide a name for the disk, and choose the file systems. For external drives, it almost always makes sense to format in exFAT. Then select the default GUID Partition Map (GPT) scheme.
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Click the E rase button when you're done and the Disk Utility will format your disk with the settings you specified. This will erase all the files on the drive.
Before you remove the drive, click the eject icon to the right of the disk in the Finder or Disk Utility windows. How to Format External/USB Drive on Windows PC There are several ways to format drive in Windows PC, you can do that in This PC or in Disk Management. Option 1: Format External Drive in This PC 1. Press Windows logo key + E to open File Explorer. Right click on the drive you want to format, click on Format. Under File system box, select exFAT for this drive.
Then click Start button to go on. Option 2: Format External Drive in Disk Management 1. Press Win+X, then hit K key to open Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc). Right click on the drive you want to format, click on Format. Select exFAT for this drive. Then click OK button to go on.
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